


Your Hair Was Long When We First Met

by chucksauce



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drabble, M/M, Songfic, Sort of? - Freeform, canon-typical angst, catws compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 20:56:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2402600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucksauce/pseuds/chucksauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe he wasn't the man Steve remembered from their youth, but now he could start to believe that maybe he wasn't just the assassin of his own scattered memories, either. Maybe Steve was right, maybe there was something new he could be now, in the spaces between those two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Hair Was Long When We First Met

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, my gosh. I've been on a major Steve/Bucky binge the last several weeks. This is the first time I've written this pairing, so I'm hoping it's all right. It's just, I heard this song and I couldn't _not_ write it.
> 
> Un-beta'd. All mistakes are mine, obviously.
> 
> Inspired by Regina Spektor's _[Samson](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p62rfWxs6a8)_.

> Samson came to my bed
> 
> Told me that my hair was red
> 
> Told me I was beautiful and came into my bed
> 
> Oh I cut his hair myself one night
> 
> A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light
> 
> And he told me that I'd done alright
> 
> And kissed me 'til the mornin' light, the mornin' light
> 
> And he kissed me 'til the mornin' light
> 
> \--Regina Spektor, _Samson_

 

Outside the window, stars like old light from decades ago twinkled, distant and cold. Snow piled in silent drifts, the blizzard having blown itself out hours before. Wind stirred bare branches, razor sharp and black against the street lamps.

The dream that woke Bucky was one he hadn’t had since he first saw Steve on the bridge, its contents muddled and confused, a barely-remembered panorama of images that left him raw and panting when he woke. All he could remember was Steve’s blonde hair, red with matted blood.

He sighed, pressed his forehead against the freezing pane of glass, and blinked away the tears that had threatened to spill since he’d opened his eyes. He tried to slow his breathing, quiet and measured until it matched Steve’s, who lay curled on his side across the room in the one bed their apartment offered.

Not that it was really _their_ apartment, not in any way that held legal significance, but when Bucky had first shown up three weeks before, the offer was there in Steve’s gaze, and Bucky did what he knew best: he swallowed up his fears, relied on his selfish self-preservation, and stayed.

His own pallet in the floor beside the bed wasn’t nearly as warm or inviting as Steve’s bed, but that was one bit of selfishness he couldn’t allow himself, not even with Steve’s soft smile and open, unguarded expression as he made the offer every night.

He registered the whisper of sheets sliding back, the creak in a floorboard as Steve rose to join him by the window, but Bucky did not turn to acknowledge him. The heat radiating from Steve’s body against his back pressed gently, more welcome than he cared to admit. He hadn’t realized he was shivering until Steve’s warmth, Steve’s hands lay gently against his skin.

“Trouble sleeping?”

Steve’s voice rumbled, sleep-muzzed and barely more than a whisper against the back of his neck, and Bucky fought off a tremble of another kind, closing his eyes against the well of need that gaped inside of him, deep and empty.

Bucky rarely trusted his voice these days. He nodded.

Fingers brushed through his lank hair, and Bucky closed his eyes again, trapped between polar opposites: the icy, unforgiving glass against his forehead and the wintry world beyond, and Steve at his back like heat and home and second chances.

That’s the way it had always been, hadn’t it? That’s what those scraps of memories told him.

Steve, who took him in without question, who opened his home to the hollow-eyed assassin whose only possessions came in the form of a cold, cruel metal arm and enough smoke and blood to last too many lifetimes. Steve, who never took his choices away the way his masters had, who never pushed him for more than self-care with an odd, quiet determination that spoke to the man Steve remembered more than the man Bucky now was.

For the hundredth, the thousandth, the millionth time, his mind’s eye flashed the image from the Smithsonian, the smiling soldier who’d grinned at Steve like he’d hung the moon. He wondered if that was the reason Steve took him in--more for the memory than the broken man before him.

Could he cobble himself together, from all the jagged pieces of who he has been?

“I want to cut it off,” Bucky found himself murmuring.

“Hm?” Steve asked, though his hand stilled in Bucky’s hair.

“Cut it off. Can you do it?”

He felt Steve nod slowly. “I could, if that’s what you want. In the morning?”

“Now.” Bucky opened his eyes, though his gaze slid over the landscape outside the window blindly. “Please?”

  
  


Yellow light illuminated the kitchen in the pre-dawn dark, and Steve gathered his makeshift tools in silence. Bucky dragged a chair from the breakfast table onto the tile, peeled off his shirt, now clammy from sleep-sweat. He watched Steve in muted fascination, the line of his shoulders and the strength of his back, and something sparked in the back of his mind. He could see a much younger Steve, narrower shoulders, knobbier back hidden by an oversized shirt, only the size of his hands and his heart the same.

Something tightened in Bucky’s throat.

It was the truth all the history books had forgotten, those holy books to the Shrine of Captain America, the small kernel that Bucky had kept for himself all this time, even when his masters had tried so hard to take it away. As an assassin, it was his downfall. As a man, it might be his salvation.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, and over by the counter, Steve’s shoulders tensed. Only for a moment, and then they relaxed again, and Steve turned, dull kitchen scissors and comb in hand.

The smile he offered Bucky was infinitesimal and vulnerable, one Bucky hadn’t seen before. His heart thudded in his chest.

“All right, Samson, how short d’you want it?” Steve’s voice was quiet, and his words well-worn, like a script from another time. Bucky didn’t recognize it outright, though it itched at his memory.

Instead, he relived a shard from the Winter Soldier, a snatch of crooning voice and echoing music, something he must have overheard during a mission, rare as that would’ve been. _I’ve seen this room, I’ve walked this floor._

When he didn’t reply, his line missed, Steve’s expression settled into something a little more distant, though no less attentive. “How short, Buck?”

“Don’t care. I want it gone.”

For the life of him, Bucky couldn’t explain why he had the urge to be rid of his hair all of a sudden; it hadn’t been a point in the nightmare he’d seen, hadn’t even been something in the back of his day-to-day thoughts, though now that  he’d decided it, he was determined to see it through.

Steve slid the plastic comb through his hair, soothing out the few snarls that had kinked it while Bucky slept. He shifted, lifting the scissors, and Bucky closed his eyes at the first quiet _snick_ vibrated through his follicles.

It was relaxing, to submit himself to Steve’s care like this, Bucky realized. It came as no surprise, though, not when submitting to Steve had felt like a safety in so many other ways in the past few weeks. It left him room to breathe, room to exist without thinking, safety to do so.

He didn’t realize he’d dozed until Steve tapped him on the shoulder, until he heard Steve’s quiet chuckle in the empty silence of the kitchen.

“Almost done, Buck. Just a little bit more, then we can go back to bed.”

 

Bucky stood in front of the bathroom mirror, his flesh hand lifted to card through his short, mostly-even strands of hair. His face now bare, exposed, strange to him. He looked somewhat more like the man from the Smithsonian, though dark circles under his eyes, dark patchy stubble, and subtle lines around his eyes and mouth that hinted at the in-between graced this new face before him.

But, for the first time since he’d appeared in Steve’s home, he felt like he might just be able to evade the Winter Soldier’s shadow, like that power could be taken from him and he’d never ask for it back. He found himself smiling.

“D’you like it?” Steve asked, propped in the doorframe. His arms folded across his chest, and just the sight of his cautious face reflected over Bucky’s shoulder in the mirror twisted something deep inside Bucky, opening up that cavern of want once more.

“You’ve done all right,” Bucky answered before turning.

Maybe he wasn’t the man Steve remembered from their youth, but now he could start to believe that maybe he wasn’t just the assassin of his own scattered memories, either. Maybe Steve was right, maybe there was something new he could be now, in the spaces between those two.

And if there was something new he could be, there was something new maybe he and Steve could be, too.

It was a dizzying thought.

“You want to come back to bed? Dawn’s in a few hours.” Steve shifted, standing upright, his arms dropping to his sides. He was as unprotected, then, as Bucky.

Before he could doubt himself, before he could think it through and list all the reasons it was a terrible idea, Bucky turned, leaned forward, pressed his body to Steve’s. His arms around Steve’s neck felt like second nature.

“Thanks, Delilah,” he said, and though the words were completely unplanned, they rang of familiarity.

“Remember that, do you?”

Truth be told, Bucky didn’t remember, not exactly, but it felt like the right thing to say. So instead of disappointing Steve with that information, he leaned forward, let his lips brush against Steve’s, a warm caress.

Steve’s arms tightened around his waist, and Bucky knew he’d done the right thing. They stayed like that for several long seconds, until Steve pulled back to press his forehead to Bucky’s.

“Come to bed?”

It wasn’t a sexual invitation, Bucky could tell. And it wasn’t sidestepping the conversation they would inevitably have about what had just happened. But it was an acceptance of its own, and one Bucky found himself glad for.

 

_Samson went bed, not much hair left on his head. He ate a slice of Wonder Bread, and went back right to bed…_

__

**Author's Note:**

> The line of song Bucky remembers in the kitchen, in case you missed it, comes from _Hallelujah_ , which was originally by Leonard Cohen. But if you've heard it, it was probably [this version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8AWFf7EAc4) by Jeff Buckley. Really, I was inspired by the Regina Spektor song, but this one's tangentially related, since it mentions Delilah cutting Samson's hair, too. Also the angsty love thing. Sssshhhhh. Just go with it.
> 
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> 
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> 
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